New Book (launch):  Monica De La Torre: Feminista Frequencies

Bery happy to see the arrival of this new book:

Feminista Frequencies Community Building through Radio in the Yakima Valley by Monica De La Torre

Beginning in the 1970s Chicana and Chicano organizers turned to community radio broadcasting to educate, entertain, and uplift Mexican American listeners across the United States. In rural areas, radio emerged as the most effective medium for reaching relatively isolated communities such as migrant farmworkers. And in Washington’s Yakima Valley, where the media landscape was dominated by perspectives favorable to agribusiness, community radio for and about farmworkers became a life-sustaining tool.

Feminista Frequencies unearths the remarkable history of one of the United States’ first full-time Spanish-language community radio stations, Radio KDNA, which began broadcasting in the Yakima Valley in 1979. Extensive interviews reveal the work of Chicana and Chicano producers, on-air announcers, station managers, technical directors, and listeners who contributed to the station’s success. Monica De La Torre weaves these oral histories together with a range of visual and audio artifacts, including radio programs, program guides, and photographs to situate KDNA within the larger network of Chicano community-based broadcasting and social movement activism. Feminista Frequencies highlights the development of a public broadcasting model that centered Chicana radio producers and documents the central role of women in developing this infrastructure in the Yakima Valley. De La Torre shows how KDNA revolutionized community radio programming, adding new depth to the history of the Chicano movement, women’s activism, and media histories.

There is also a virtual book launch on April 22, 2022, co-sponsored by the Radio Preservation Task Force and SCMS Latino/a caucus

Join author De La Torre with fellow radio scholars Sonia Robles and D. Ines Casillas for a discussion about FEMINISTA FREQUENCIES and why we owe contemporary radio activism to the women of the 1970s!

Meeting Registration – Zoom

New Online Exhbition! Forms, Voices, Networks: Feminism & the Media

Today the German Historical Institute has opened a new online exhibition: Forms, Voices, Networks: Feminism & The Media

Quoting the GHI’s announcement:

The exhibition Forms, Voices, Networks explores the intersections between the growth of mass media and women’s rights movements in a transnational context during the 20th century. Centred on the histories of feminisms and the media in Britain, Germany and India, it draws attention to little-known or unheard voices and stories and draws connections between activists and the media across time and space. Through a series of snapshot examples, it illustrates how feminists have mobilized and negotiated media to advance women’s rights and contest gender stereotypes at different moments. It also attends to the ambivalence, changeable and potentially contradictory nature of women’s relation to the media across different time periods and contexts.

Built around the themes of recognition, redefinition, remapping, reclamation and regeneration, the exhibition offers a glimpse into different moments and different places of feminism. Some of these stories fit together neatly; others do not. Like a mosaic, patterns across the three countries are discernible, but so are gaps and breaks.  In doing so, the exhibition does not seek to suggest equivalences between the histories of these very different contexts. Instead, it encourages visitors to search for resonances and connections, as well as tensions and differences.

Curator Maya Caspari has developed a wonderful and varied exhibition. WREN members Kristin Skoog, Kate Murphy, and Alec Badenoch contributed to the exhibition, which includes sections on women’s radio in Germany, Britain and on the International Association of Women in Radio and Television among its rich content.

Three launch events have been announced:

The Politics of Photography: Feminist Activisms in India and Britain explores the use of photography as a tool of feminist protest and mobilization. Featuring artist/activists Sheba Chhachhi and Mary Ann Kennedy, and discussant Na’ama Klorman-Eraqi, the discussion was held on 23 November.

The second event Recognition and the Intersections of Feminist Activisms in Germany and India  will include reflections from Padma Anagol (Cardiff), Tiffany Florvil (New Mexico) and Ingrid Sharp (Leeds). It will be held on 15 December at 5:30pm GMT.

The final launch event Women on the Air Waves: Feminism and the Radio in Britain and Germany will take place as a part of the conference The History of Medialization and Empowerment: The Intersection of Women’s Rights Activism and the Media, and will be held on 20 January at 5:30pm GMT.

New Book!  Annette Rimmer: Radio Activism: Breaking the Silence and Empowering Women 

Excited about this new publication!

 

“This unique book draws on the narratives of women participants in community radio, using intersectionality, feminist, critical psychological and community development frameworks to explore how this highly symbolic, creative dimension of activism can unmute marginalised women and enrich corporate media.

Over a period of four years, twelve female radio project volunteers offer their experiences which they analyse, together as part of the RRG (Radio Research Group), alongside a conceptual and contextual framework to produce insights on the gendered nature of silence, voice and empowerment, and the wider potential of radio activism.”

Source: Radio Activism: Breaking the Silence and Empowering Women – 1st Editio

How the FBI Destroyed the Careers of 41 Women in TV and Radio | The MIT Press Reader

At the dawn of the Cold War era, dozens of progressive women working in radio and television were placed on a media blacklist and forced from their industry. Carol Stabile explores this shameful period in American history.

Source: How the FBI Destroyed the Careers of 41 Women in TV and Radio | The MIT Press Reader

Podcast #302 – Feminista Frequencies – Radio Survivor

Preview of an exciting new book on the wonderful podcast Radio Survivor!

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This week, we take a close look at the history of an influential Spanish language community radio station: KDNA. Located in Washington State, the station launched in 1979 and serves a rural community which includes farm workers and immigrants. Our guest, Monica De La Torre, is Assistant Professor at the School of Transborder Studies at […]

Source: Podcast #302 – Feminista Frequencies – Radio Survivor

Podcast #289 – Celebrating Women in Sound – Radio Survivor

From the wonderful Radio Survivor Podcast, a new episode devoted to women in sound…

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In honor of Women’s History Month, this week’s episode focuses on women in sound. Our guests, Jennifer Hyland Wang and Jenny Stoever, return to the show to discuss sound studies, the cultural politics of listening, the history of women’s voices on the airwaves and on podcasts, as well as broader issues of representation. Jennifer Hyland […]

Source: Podcast #289 – Celebrating Women in Sound – Radio Survivor

Sonic Spaces |Gendered Soundscapes, 10 March 2021

Discourse around gender and sound often reflects biases about who should be allowed to take up sonic space: from historical assumptions that women’s voices were unsuitable for the radio, to contemporary biases in institutional policies that work to exclude the work of women in the music industry, as well as continued critiques of female speaking voices for expressing unappealing vocal traits like “uptalk” and “vocal fry”. This event will bring together a diverse panel to discuss these and other ways in which sonic spaces can reflect broader social and cultural issues around gender and representation: Dr. Megan McGurk, host of the popular podcast and film club, “Sass Mouth Dames”, devoted to women who ruled the Hollywood box office from the 1930s-1950s; Dr. Ann Cleare, a multi-award-winning composer and Assistant Professor in Trinity’s Music and Media Technologies programme who will introduce “Sounding the Feminists,” an Irish-based collective committed to promoting and publicising the creative work of female musicians; and Dr. Jilly Boyce Kay, Lecturer in Media and Communication at the University of Leicester and author of Gender, Media and Voice (2020), who will discuss the ways that feminist voices on television were construed as “domestic nags” in the 1970s. ‘Sonic Spaces’ is organised by Jennifer O’Meara, Department of Film, as part of the Creative Arts Practice Research theme. The series considers the creative possibilities of audio and sound culture as they relate to issues of society, technology, the environment and the body. It aims to encourage the academic and broader community to reflect on our relationship to listening and its significance. ‘Sonic Spaces’ is supported by the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute.Please indicate if you have any access requirements, such as ISL/Englishinterpreting, so that we can facilitate you in attending this event. Contact: foraffer@tcd.ie.

Source: Webinar Registration – Zoom

Crowdfunding: Empowering Women & Girls in radio & podcasting

In the last 3 years Sound Women South West Network have trained and empow… Miranda Rae heeft je hulp nodig voor Empowering Women & Girls in radio & podcasting

Source: Inzamelingsactie van Miranda Rae : Empowering Women & Girls in radio & podcasting

New Article: Emma Heywood -Radio Journalism and Women’s Empowerment in Niger

Emma Heywood Radio Journalism and Women’s Empowerment in Niger. Journalism Studies. (2020) ahead of print

 

The significance of radio as a provider of essential news and information in conflict-affected and fragile countries cannot be underestimated nor can its role in contributing to shifts in critical consciousness, changes in behaviour, and raising awareness amongst marginalised groups. This is particularly the case regarding the influence of radio on women’s empowerment. In Niger, women suffer from widespread gender inequality with a 75% child marriage rate, low literacy rates, polygamy and gender-based violence. The most important source of information women have is radio. This article illustrates radio’s impact on women’s rights and empowerment in the world’s poorest country. It draws on extensive fieldwork conducted in 2018–19 (workshops, semi-structured interviews and focus groups) and in-depth content analyses of women-related radio output broadcast by Studio Kalangou, a radio studio in Niger, set up in 2016 by the Swiss-based media development agency, Fondation Hirondelle. The article demonstrates how increasing and developing the targeting of radio programmes to include more women-related themes and improving the content will contribute to empowering women politically, economically and within society.

Source: Radio Journalism and Women’s Empowerment in Niger: Journalism Studies: Vol 0, No 0

Women on the Air – Women in CR in Europe – 1983

Empowerhouse‘s Birgitte Jallov has made her groundbreaking study of women in (community) radio in Europe from 1983 available free online.

As she writes on the Empowerhouse’s facebook page:

We are also now linking to it on our bibliography page.

THANK YOU BIRGITTE and HAPPY INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY TO YOU ALL!